The disorder in which the reenforcements were engaged appears strongly from this fact: On only that part of the front included between Maisons de Champagne and Hill 189 there were on October 2, 1915, no fewer than thirty-two different battalions belonging to twenty-one different regiments. During the days following the French rush through the first line, the Germans seemed to have but one idea, to strengthen their second line to stem the advance. Their counterattacks were concentrated on a comparatively unimportant part of the battle front in certain places, the loss of which appeared to them to be particularly dangerous. Therefore on the heights of Massiges the German military authorities hurled in succession isolated battalions of the 123d, 124th and 120th regiments; of the Thirtieth Regular Regiment and of the Second Regiment Ersatz Reserve (Sixteenth Corps), which were in turn decimated, for these counterattacks, hastily and crudely prepared, all ended in sanguinary failures. It was not the men who failed their leaders, for they fought like tigers when reasonable opportunities were offered them. That strong offensive capacity of the Germans seemed also, on the occasion, to have broken down. General von Ditfurth's order of the day bears witness to this: "It seemed to me that the infantry at certain points was confining its action to a mere defensive.... I cannot protest too strongly against such an idea, which necessarily results in destroying the spirit of offensive in our own troops and in arousing and strengthening in the mind of the enemy a feeling of his superiority. The enemy is left full liberty of action and our action is subjected to the will of the enemy."